Old school space-sim gamers have a love/hate relationship with Chris Roberts. On one hand he gave us the Wing Commander, Privateer, and Freelancer franchises. On the other hand, he took an active role in the abomination that was the Wing Commander movie. I still remain baffled how he could have signed off on such a perversion of the WC universe.

Yesterday news surfaced that Chris Roberts has returned to his roots, casting aside his work in film to grace us with a new space-sim title. There's very little information, and the website borders on a Geocities travesty, but I believe the choice of font is intentional. It smacks of the mission brief/debrief from later Wing Commander titles.

So I ask you, denizens of the Internet, what this means? Will we find ourselves immersed in a grand space-opera that hearkens back to the Wing Commander days of yore? Or will we find ourselves plying our trade amongst the stars in a cosmic sandbox, ala Freelancer? Or is he just fucking with us?

Personally I will kill the bastard if it's not a persistent universe space-sim that builds on the tremendous love for Freelancer.

I played the first three or four Wing Commanders, some of the expansion packs, both Privateers, Academy, and Armada. Didn't play Freelancer because I was kind of sick of Roberts at the time, although I understand that may have been a mistake. I saw the movie, too, which was a definite mistake and continues to be a strong contender for my vote for worst movie ever.

Personally, I want a new Wing Commander, but in the vein of the very first one. The longer that series went on, the more it felt like I was just riding along humoring someone by watching their crappy amateur space opera instead of playing a game. Give me missions in a deeply branching campaign, where my actions and the simulation determine which ships blow up, which missions succeed, and who lives and dies. Give me a sense of agency and that the outcome is by no means certain. If you won't do that, go write a damned book instead.

Privateer might be cool, too, but I kind of wonder if that formula would really be able to hold my interest these days. I've done enough exploration-based games that my ability to sense the shallow underlying the big is keenly honed at this point, and my patience with progression-based gameplay is all but gone. It would have to be very clever and a lot deeper than the old games used to be to really hold up, although some Privateer-like games have managed to tack on some sort of extra strategic layers to the genre to good effect.

Old school space-sim gamers have a love/hate relationship with Chris Roberts. On one hand he gave us the Wing Commander, Privateer, and Freelancer franchises. On the other hand, he took an active role in the abomination that was the Wing Commander movie. I still remain baffled how he could have signed off on such a perversion of the WC universe.

I don't get the hate for the WC movie and the simultaneous love for the live action (not saying you fit this description, but it seems to be consistent in the fandom) segments in WC3 and later games. The production values were about equal (granted, a feature film should have had a higher budget :shrug: ) and the story was a decent synopsis of the story of the first game (such as I remember it that is). Mostly the thing that sucked the most about it was the absolutely terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad casting decisions. Freddie Prinze Jr. and Matthew Lillard!?! Really!?!?!

Now don't get me wrong, Matthew Lillard can do the funny-man very well. That's not what the movie needed. FPJ can do the douchey-toolbag very very well, but that's not what the movie needed. What the movie needed was a couple of actors that could bring the appropriate levels of serious ham to the movie that the concept needed. That's what's great about WC3: Mark Hamill, Malcolm McDowell and John-Rhys Davies! That's a bacon fan's dream come true! Only the addition of William Shatner would have made the ham-fest complete.

Yesterday news surfaced that Chris Roberts has returned to his roots, casting aside his work in film to grace us with a new space-sim title. There's very little information, and the website borders on a Geocities travesty, but I believe the choice of font is intentional. It smacks of the mission brief/debrief from later Wing Commander titles.

So I ask you, denizens of the Internet, what this means? Will we find ourselves immersed in a grand space-opera that hearkens back to the Wing Commander days of yore? Or will we find ourselves plying our trade amongst the stars in a cosmic sandbox, ala Freelancer? Or is he just fucking with us?n Personally I will kill the bastard if it's not a persistent universe space-sim that builds on the tremendous love for Freelancer.

Wasn't it Chris that made us gnash our weep and gnash our teeth as we were forced to give up our joysticks for mouse control in Starlancer? Or was that Erin? Both? I don't remember.

I'm with M4EOzzy: If he makes a game that's awesome I'll buy it, play it and enjoy it. But it's not like he's been so full of win that he can do no wrong. So I'll wait and see.

Wasn't it Chris that made us gnash our weep and gnash our teeth as we were forced to give up our joysticks for mouse control in Starlancer? Or was that Erin? Both? I don't remember.

I'm with M4EOzzy: If he makes a game that's awesome I'll buy it, play it and enjoy it. But it's not like he's been so full of win that he can do no wrong. So I'll wait and see.

Pretty sure Starlancer was still primarily joystick driven (and a pretty decent game to boot), it was Freelancer where it became all about the mouse. And honestly, while still not a huge fan of mouse controls for it, I'd almost rather it have gamepad support than joystick (though it should have that too). I haven't owned a new joystick in years, don't know if the one I have even works, and am not looking to purchase a new one for one game or so...

and the story was a decent synopsis of the story of the first game (such as I remember it that is).

There is no connection whatsover between the movie and any Wing Commander game. One might argue that a tenuous connection exists between the movie and the tie-in novel Fleet Action, if you take away the Pilgrims and the navigation computer McGuffin at the start fo the film. Beyond that, the movie is about as "in-universe" to Wing Commander as the Starship Trooper films are to the novel.

I don't get the hate for the WC movie and the simultaneous love for the live action (not saying you fit this description, but it seems to be consistent in the fandom) segments in WC3 and later games.

I've never gotten a sense that there was a lot of love for the live-action bits in Wing Commander, but then again the Wing Commander days kind of predated the highly active internet communities we have for any major game these days.

I don't hate the FMV or anything, but I do recall being nonplussed by the FMV at the time because to me it felt symptomatic of the trend of "Chris Roberts directs a space opera!" taking precedence over the actual game.

krimhorn wrote:

the story was a decent synopsis of the story of the first game (such as I remember it that is).

Maybe I'm suppressing, but except for featuring the Tiger's Claw fighting the Kilrathi, I don't remember it having much to do with the game. Mostly what I remember of it was that the protagonist was some sort of oppressed minority- to generate conflict with the rest of the crew- and that he ultimately won over the crew and then used a magic tattoo to teleport to Earth to save the day. Or something.

Also, a really wince inducing scene where they were hiding in the ship and the Kilrathi were using literal sonar pings, *IN SPACE*, to try to track them down as they re-enacted the tension-building scene that exists in every submarine movie ever.

I don't get the hate for the WC movie and the simultaneous love for the live action (not saying you fit this description, but it seems to be consistent in the fandom) segments in WC3 and later games.

The movie seems to have sucked...

Wikipedia wrote:

Wing Commander was panned by critics. It received a rating of 11% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 46 reviews, and a 0% rating by the site's Top Critics. It is also considered a major box office flop: the total domestic gross of Wing Commander's theatrical run is estimated at $11,578,059, not nearly enough to recoup its $30 million budget. Chris Roberts never directed another motion picture.

... so, the hate for that is pretty understandable.

It's pretty easy to understand why the FMVs could get a pass, if they were beloved. Some combination of:

-They sucked less

-Expectations are lower for in-game cinematics

-In-game cinematics are less integral to the game experience than, well, the quality of the movie is to a movie, so they could get away with being poor and still contribute something to the game while not standing on their own as an enjoyable experience

-The movie came out 9 years after the game, and standards had changed(e- Five years after the first Wing Commander with cinematics)

-Love for the game rubbed off on the cinematics, but not on the movie due to some combination of "they suck less" and the time for love of the game to wear off

And, of course, there's the possibility that the in-game cinematics were only really enthused over by a vocal minority of Wing Commander fans in the first place.

Wasn't it Chris that made us gnash our weep and gnash our teeth as we were forced to give up our joysticks for mouse control in Starlancer? Or was that Erin? Both? I don't remember.

I'm with M4EOzzy: If he makes a game that's awesome I'll buy it, play it and enjoy it. But it's not like he's been so full of win that he can do no wrong. So I'll wait and see.

Pretty sure Starlancer was still primarily joystick driven (and a pretty decent game to boot), it was Freelancer where it became all about the mouse. And honestly, while still not a huge fan of mouse controls for it, I'd almost rather it have gamepad support than joystick (though it should have that too). I haven't owned a new joystick in years, don't know if the one I have even works, and am not looking to purchase a new one for one game or so...

Troublesome Strumpet wrote:

krimhorn wrote:

and the story was a decent synopsis of the story of the first game (such as I remember it that is).

There is no connection whatsover between the movie and any Wing Commander game. One might argue that a tenuous connection exists between the movie and the tie-in novel Fleet Action, if you take away the Pilgrims and the navigation computer McGuffin at the start fo the film. Beyond that, the movie is about as "in-universe" to Wing Commander as the Starship Trooper films are to the novel.

Well I could have sworn I had the two stories remembered (at the high level) correctly. I may very well have been conflating the story of one onto the other (seeing as I've seen the movie only once or twice and played the original game exactly once). :shrug: Considering multiple people have said I'm wrong then I stand corrected.

Delor: Good points. Some of them I actually hadn't thought about (namely FMV cutscenes being less important to a game at the time than a well told story is today).

The WC movie was AWFUL! No one hates it because it was live-action, they hate it because it was a terrible torture to subject oneself to. Did you know Saddam used to make his political prisoners watch that movie? It was the only way to break them.

Though I didn't really care one way or another for the movie, Wing Commander, I rather enjoyed the book version of it. Maybe it was just because I wasn't being bugged by the movies version of the Kilrathi, so it was less annoyance clouding my comprehension. Either way, it reminded me a lot of the novelization of Men In Black...more details, looking at things from other points of view (MIB had more alien info, and the POV of the bug hiding in Edgar), and it was fairly well-written.

and the story was a decent synopsis of the story of the first game (such as I remember it that is).

There is no connection whatsover between the movie and any Wing Commander game. One might argue that a tenuous connection exists between the movie and the tie-in novel Fleet Action, if you take away the Pilgrims and the navigation computer McGuffin at the start fo the film. Beyond that, the movie is about as "in-universe" to Wing Commander as the Starship Trooper films are to the novel.

Whoa there. Starship Troopers was actually a good movie, and an excellent satire of the fascist politics espoused by the book. The WC movie was a massive turd. Full stop.Also, Freelancer 2? I would buy the shit out of that. I know it did not support joysticks, but I loved Freelancer all the same. It was like x-wing alliance, but I could go anywhere. It blew my twelve year old mind.

I just want a market where I can buy ships and upgrades/customizations, hubs on different planets for missions to make cash, an overarching plotline that I can kind-of ignore and the ability to be what I want. I guess I want Skyrim in Space, basically.

I just want a market where I can buy ships and upgrades/customizations, hubs on different planets for missions to make cash, an overarching plotline that I can kind-of ignore and the ability to be what I want. I guess I want Skyrim in Space, basically.

Right now I'm just getting thrown to their backup site. Last I saw they were at $165k pledged. Not too bad for a first day. Obviously not as amazing as Obsidian hitting their $1.1M goal in 24 hours, but I think people were expecting and waiting for that. I don't know how many people were expecting Roberts to announce a crowd-funded game.

Now we'll see how many people really want the space-sim genre to make a comeback.

Right now I'm just getting thrown to their backup site. Last I saw they were at $165k pledged. Not too bad for a first day. Obviously not as amazing as Obsidian hitting their $1.1M goal in 24 hours, but I think people were expecting and waiting for that. I don't know how many people were expecting Roberts to announce a crowd-funded game.

Now we'll see how many people really want the space-sim genre to make a comeback.

The 165k was only the total for the *main* site, not including the backup site or the European backup site. Given the number of people being referred to the backup sites... The number is probably much larger at this point. The $165k was the main site within 3 hours of taking pledges.

And Wasteland 2 is inXile Entertainment, no Obsidian. But my first thought on watching the million roll in for that earlier this year was... Chris Roberts should do this.

I just want a market where I can buy ships and upgrades/customizations, hubs on different planets for missions to make cash, an overarching plotline that I can kind-of ignore and the ability to be what I want. I guess I want Skyrim in Space, basically.

Exactly this. He's already playing pretty heavily on nostalgia (look at the ships) to try and get that vote and it sounds like he's massively over-promising what can be delivered. He;s pretty proud that they almost have the combat mini-game ready for... alpha. Seems like that's the simplest of his promises to deliver to me (but maybe I'm wrong).

But hell, I'm hopeful.

I still haven't made up my mind on whether to support his kickstarter independent crowd sourcing.

Not having the counter up is a big fail. Wasteland 2 had $900k in 24 hours and ended at $2.9 million 30 days later. The site being down might have cost them the early momentum to make this work.

Then again, the average pledge is ~$100 where as the Wasteland 2 average pledge was $50, so they only need a few more people then the 20,000 who had registered for the teaser site to get to $2 million.

I suspect a lot of folks are waiting for the site to be sorted so they can see the impact of their pledges in realtime.

I don't think we will see any FMV nowadays. It was kind of an intermediate step, the CDROM had just come out and CR wanted to add another level of detail beyond the animated cut scenes. Freelancer used in-engine cutscenes and that was fine by me.

Edit: If you try to "Log In" on the RSI site, there is now a "Register" button up again.